søndag 30. desember 2012

Yesterday, December 29, was the
feastday of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was killed
in 1170 when four knights entered the cathedral and slew him. This
transgression caused an uproar throughout Christendom and only three
years later Thomas was canonised by Pope Alexander III. The cult of
Thomas Becket grew rapidly in popularity and soon eclipsed other
cults, including that of St Edward the Confessor, who had been
canonised only twelve years earlier in 1161 by the same pope. The
trajectories of these two cults make for an interesting comparison
because their origins are close to each other in space and time, but
also because of the many differences between them. In this blogpost I
aim to look at a few of these differences. The images are all taken from the British Library online catalogue.

Martyrdom of Thomas Becket from MS Harley 5102, first quarter of 13th century

The Canonisations

The two cults came about within the
reign of the same pope, Alexander III (1159-81). By the time of
Edward the Confessor's canonisation (1161), there was a papal schism
which divided Latin Christendom between Alexander and his rival,
antipope Victor IV, and each of the contestans vied for the loyalty
of Europe's secular princes. It was then the English clergy and King
Henry II decided to re-apply for the canonisation of Edward the
Confessor (an attempt of 1138 had fallen through on grounds of
insufficient ecclesiastical support), and the request was granted.
This was possibly due to Henry II's support of Alexander, but it may
also have been because the English clergy was now united behind this
claim and thus provided the support that had been lacking in 1138.

Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) provided
Henry II with a sainted forebear that could legitimise his own rule,
which was still a matter of contention in the 1160s. However, there
is nothing to suggest that Henry expressed any personal devotion to
Edward, he was more interested in the political aspect of the saint -
this claim is supported by the enthusiasm Henry dedicated to the
genesis of Wace's Roman de Rou. In ecclesiastical circles, however,
Edward did not achieve any wide popularity, and it was primarily at
Westminster - where the king lay buried - that any significant
devotion could be found. This can be seen clearly by the fact that
Archbishop Thomas Becket himself applied to Pope Alexander at the
Council of Tours in May 1163 for the canonisation of his predecessor
Anselm (1109) - quite possibly to counter the English monarchy's
brand new saint. Although Pope Alexander expressed sympathy for the
cause and allowed veneration, he refused to canonise the famous
archbishop and theologian. Becket's petition is suggestive of the
growing hostility between him and the king, an hostility that was to
reach new heights at the council of Westminster in October that year.
Edward's lack of wide ecclesiastical support can also be seen in the
fact that at Edward's translation, October 13 1163, only the
archdiocese of Canterbury was represented, not the archdiocese of
York.

At the time of Thomas Becket's
canonisation the papal schism was still ongoing, but the murder of an
English archbishop within the confines of a cathedral enraged both
lay and cleric, and both Becket's ecclesiastical supporters (many of
whom were French clerics who had entertained him during his exile in
the period 1164-65) and the lay populace expressed their horror. In
1173 Pope Alexander canonised Becket (without much ado, as had been
the case with the Confessor) and the following year Henry II
performed a public penance for his role in the murder. Henry was also
forced to make certain concessions to the pope regarding royal
interference in ecclesiastical matters, which had been one of
Becket's major causes. Through his martyrdom, in other words, Thomas
Becket provided the English church with exactly the kind of saintly
figurehead he had sought in Anselm seven years prior to his death.
However, although Becket remained popular even after the immediate
surge of piety had lost its momentum, he did not alter significantly
much with regards to the relationship between Church and Monarchy,
and the most significant long-term beneficial consequences are
probably the boost in the revenue of Christ Church at Canterbury,
which hosted his shrine. Nonetheless, the cult enjoyed an impressive
longevity.

Edward the Confessor with book and sceptre from MS Royal 20A II, c.1307-1327

The Textual Traditions

Another
interesting difference between Thomas Becket and Edward the Confessor
is the development of their respective textual traditions. Edward the
Confessor had been dead for nearly a century by the time he was
canonised, and because of his position as the last - or penultimate,
depending on your views - Anglo-Saxon king he was immediately revered
by the Normans in a successful attempt to legitimise their new reign.
It was the childless Confessor who had appointed William, Duke of
Normandy, as his successor - or at least that was what the Norman
historian William of Jumièges claimed already in the 1060s and
-70s. Following Edward's death, therefore, he made important
appearances in historiographical works of various kinds, the most
significant of which being Vita
Edwardi qui apud Westmonasteriam recquiescit,
a biography written to secure his widow Edith's position at the new
Norman court. This work was the chief source for Osbert of Clare,
prior at Westminster who attempted to have Edward canonised in 1138
and who wrote the first Edward hagiography to support his petition.
Although initially unsuccessful, this was the basis for Aelred of
Rievaulx's hagiography of 1163, written for Edward's translation. In
other words, at the time of Edward's canonisation there was a rich
textual tradition to glean from for the liturgical material - the
earliest of which came about sometime in the period 1161-66 - and
later histories and hagiographies.

For
Thomas Becket things were vastly different. Between his death and his
canonisation there were three years and consequently no tradition to
build from. However, the sensational character of his death - and the
fact that there were clerical eye-witnesses who could disseminate
their knowledge firsthand - resulted in an impressively swift
production of purely hagiographical material, which did not spring
from any preceding historiographical tradition. The earliest text was
the Vita sancti
Thomae
(first recension c.1171-72) of Edward Grim, the man who had attempted
to shield Becket with his arm and nearly lost it as a result. This
text was the foundation of a metrical French life authored by Guernes
de Pont-Ste-Maxence in 1172-74 and was also used by William Fitz
Stephen in the second recension of his Vita
sancti Thomae.
In addition there was a Passio
beati Thomae
in dissemination from the 12th century onwards. These texts were in
turn the foundation for the office for Thomas Becket, which came
about very quickly following his canonisation.

The most significant differences between Thomas Becket and Edward,
however, are typological, and this may in turn account for the
different degrees of successfulness the two saints could claim.
Edward was, as his sobriquet tells us, hallowed for his virtuous
life, his virginity, his peaceful reign, his mild-mannered behaviour
and his ability to heal the lame, the blind and - in one memorable
instance - the scrofulous. However, despite his commendable deeds, he
was still a rather tame saint and he paled in comparison to the
virgin martyrs who had given their life for Christ, facing an often
excessively brutal end, or in comparison to the apostolic martyrs who
had died gruesomely by the hands of heathens in their attempts to
spread the Gospel. He was also a rather tame king, for although his
reign was of a relative peace, it was rather boring compared to the
mighty men-of-arms like Charlemagne or Stephen of Hungary. In other
words, Edward fell short in two categories, and this can be seen by
the rivalry he met from the cult of a man who was listed both as a
martyr, a king and - if I remember correctly - a virgin, namely
Edmund the Martyr, 9th-century king of East Anglia. This is not to
say that the virtues and iconography of Edward rendered him
completely impotent as a saint, far from it, but as a humble and
chaste king who - reportedly - submitted to the superiority of the
Church, he was more attractive to ecclesiasticals, who found in him
the perfect model of a Christian king - this was especially the case
in the Cistercian climate of the 12th century - and who occasionally
portrayed him resembling a bishop rather than a king.

Thomas Becket, however, was a
different saint type, the martyr. As André Vauchez has pointed out
the brutal death of a contemporary will often result in a surge of
enthused piety from the populace, and this was indeed the case with
Thomas Becket. His social position, his steadfastness in a brutal
martyrdom and his network of supporters on the continent helped to
rapidly disseminate his cult, and although the Confessor had enjoyed
a certain popularity beyond England, it was little compared to that
of the martyred archbishop. Furthermore, the hagiographers of Thomas
were indignantly opposed to the king and framed the saint's
characerisation in a manner that could appeal to all Christians, and
that also gave a certain edge to the Church. Thomas Becket was
portrayed as a new man, a reformed sinner who had transformed himself
upon taking his office as archbishop in a manner reminiscent of
Paul's letter to the Ephesians. He was furthermore described as a
good shepherd, a christic image which appealed to the laity who thus
considered him a patron willing to aid them in their plights, and
also to the clergy who saw him as a stout defender of the Church.
Last, but far from least, he was of course a miracle-worker, which
was mandatory for any saint, and which is what attracts a large
following among both lay and learned. It is in these miraculous
cures, however, that we find one of the most interesting differences
between Thomas and Edward, and we can imagine that this had severe
ramification for Edward's standing - although this particular link
has not been conclusively proved.

As a miracle-worker Edward the
Confessor had been described in very christic terms: he, both while
still alive and when dead, healed the blind and the lame in the same
way that Christ had done, and this christomimesis was evidence of his
virtuous life. Thomas Becket, however, showed his virtue
posthumously, but his catalogue of cures and helps exceeded the
repertoire of Edward and included feeding the hungry and healing a
long list of diseases and ailings. In an age when medicine was
largely painful and ineffectual, and when a plethora of illnesses
were very common, this was a major point of attraction for the pious
laity.

To
sum up, then, the cults of Thomas Becket and Edward the Confessor
co-existed throughout the High Middle Ages and make for an
interesting comparison. I have here focussed on the differences, but
the matter is so complex and requires a book-length study of its own
in order to satisfy the attention demanded by the material. They were
typologically very different and their propagators approached the
mandatory christomimesis in different ways. Ultimately, however,
Thomas Becket proved most successful in that regard, as he had died
an actual martyr's death, while the first biographer of Edward the
Confessor could only vaguely suggest a Christlike end.

mandag 24. desember 2012

A second Christmas gift to all my readers: John Milton's Hymn
on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. This epic rendition of the
Christmas gospel is a celebration of the triumph of Christianity
over the pagan gods, and a poetic remodelling of one of the
most treasured and most important stories of the world.
The text is taken from bartleby.com.

søndag 23. desember 2012

The last few years I have become increasingly fond of English Christmas carols and Christmas hymns, owing no doubt in part to the exposure to English church music I had when living in England. One of my favourite hymns is God rest ye merry gentlemen, and for the occasion I would like to post one of the many versions for you to enjoy. Merry Christmas!

torsdag 20. desember 2012

I had hoped I would be able to resuscitate this blog after I had handed in the printed copies of my MA thesis in Mid-November, that I could finally take some time off academic work and that I could finally write all those pieces I've had planned for months. As it turned out, I did manage to take time off academic work, but unfortunately, my mind counted even blogposts academic work and refused to take part in it, descending into ennui, which prohibited anything resembling what I'd been doing the past few months. Even completing Robertson Davies' excellent novel The Rebel Angels took longer than I had expected, and although it was a splendid read I had to summon more willpower to complete it than normally would be the case. Completing my MA thesis had, in other words, drained me of more energy than I could possibly have foreseen back in August, when everything seemed to be coming to a close very neatly and swiftly, and when I still considered my Latin courses to be a pleasant diversion from editing my own texts.

By October reality came gradually creeping up on me and suddenly smacked me in the face with the numerous rounds of editing I had to undertake, joined of course by the still-unwritten chapter 1 which in turn very soon took on massive proportions. As a consequence I was editing my text almost right up to the very end, and Tuesday November 13 I counted myself done and decided to send in the text. However, before I could do so I had to go a few rounds with the pdf document as well, making sure that the pages were in the right place, that the chapters and the five appendices all began on the recto side and that the list of content corresponded with reality - which took a while to persuade it to do. Finally, everything was shipped off and I could afford myself one day of much-needed rest while waiting for the thesis to be printed on Thursday. It was a joy past all the care in the world - to paraphrase Geoffrey Hill - to carry a box containing copies of my thesis to the cubicle and to dole out signed copies to friends and fellow-students.

The following weekend was a busy one and I went out with friends every night from Friday to Tuesday, and I believe this, too, drained me more than I had anticipated. The week following the completion of my thesis, I was supposed to start refreshing my Latin and prepare for two exams at the end of the term. I also meant to prepare for the thesis defence sometime in Mid-December, and I had some great plans for how that should be done. Unfortunately, I managed nothing more than to sit in my flat for days - only occasionally venturing off to see other people - and watch tv series and read comics. I was completely void of any will to get things done and all the prospects I had planned sifted away into a state of suspended action. This sensation was so overpowering that even after I had learned the date for my defence - December 13 - it took me several days before I even began to try reading through my thesis, and even that cost me more strength than I would at first have believed.

On the day of the defence I spent more of that energy I didn't really have on sheer dread and anxiety. I woke up at about five in the morning after what I suspect was nothing more than two hours of sleep, and at about 10 a.m. I went down to campus to hang out with my friends, feeling very well the weight of five and a half years of work resting heavily on my shoulders and pecking at my skull. At that point four of my closest friends had already defended their theses - two graduating in history, two in art history - and they had all achieved great results. On my day of trial I was not alone as I had two friends who were defending before me, and as the moment of truth came closer, soo too came the realisation that the bar was set really high. 12 a.m. - one hour before my friends were defending - their grades were put up, and again the results were very good, adding, of course, to the pressure upon my shoulders. It was therefore a very long journey from the cubicle to the department at 1 p.m. when my grade was to be put up, and when I came in precisely on time it turned out I had come too early: the grade was not yet put up. Consequently I had to go back to my cubicle and undertake the journey once more. When I finally saw the grade, however, the weight of my world dispersed rather quickly as it turned out I could be very happy with my grade and the following hour passed in far less agony than the almost eight hours preceding it.

When the defence was done and five and half years' worth of academic labours had come to a close, I felt so very relieved and so very much on top of the world that I could hardly contain my joy. Unfortunately, that joy and the anxiety and fear leading up to that joy, drained my resources even further, and I was completely unable to care about my Latin exams of the week following, and I completed two of the worst exams I have ever conducted in my time at the University.

Now, however, I have returned home for the Christmas holidays and I can finally relax. I hope this will give me strength enough to resume my academic writing and my blogging, but I do fear also this month will be dedicated to brief pieces and self-promoting poetry.

fredag 30. november 2012

While still labouring in the talons of post-thesis ennui I have been unable to summon sufficient strength of will to embark on a lengthy and scholarly blogpost, and as a consequence I present now the third installment in the series of November poetry. This time I give you an excerpt from Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender, which was his debut in the literary world. This cycle of twelve poems, one for each month, is modelled after Virgil's Eclogues and is exquisitely pastoral, each poem being a conversation between shepherds on subjects such as love, worldiness and death. The Shepheardes Calender is remarkable for its poetic range, encompassing a number of various rhyme scheme and verse forms.

The protagonist of the cycle is Colin Clout, a character taken from a poem by John Skelton (c.1460-1529), and he is widely agreed to serve as Edmund Spenser's persona. He also makes an appearance in the epic The Faerie Queene. In the 11th eclogue, the subject for Colin's mourning is a woman called Dido, and the eclogue itself is fashioned after a poem by Jean Marot (c.1450-c.1526). Since the poem is rather long, a present here only an excerpt from Colin's lament for Dido.

Shepheards, that by your flocks on Kentish downes abyde,
Waile ye this wofull waste of natures warke:
Wail we the wight, whose presence was our pryde:
Waile we the wight, whose absence is our carke.
The sonnne of all the world is dimme and darke:
The earth now lacks her wonted light,
And all we dwell in deadly night,
O heauie herse.
Breake we our pypes, that shrild as lowde as Larke,
O carefull verse.

søndag 25. november 2012

During my stay in York this August a friend and I decided to take a trip to Ripon, a village a little northwest of York. I was excited to go there and see the cathedral, and I had entertained a certain fascination for Ripon ever since my student days in York, when one of my professors told that occasionally, when the populace of York was sufficiently hostile, the archbishop would retreat to Ripon. As a consequence the village grew in importance throughout the Middle Ages, and naturally a cathedral was erected.

Before coming to Ripon we drove by bus through a late-summer Yorkshire landscape of golden fields, meandering rivers, narrow roads and small hamlets. In time I intend to get back to the subject of Ripon on this blog, but for the time being - since post-thesis ennui has rendered me unable to compose long posts - I will here present a minor poem that grew out of a fond recollection of that archetypal English countryside.

fredag 23. november 2012

Today's November poem is a strophe from Spenser's alleged unfinished book of The Faerie Queene commonly known as The Cantos of Mvtabilitie, in which there is a pageant of the months riding, bearing or accompanied by emblems of the zodiac. November is described accordingly:

Next was Nouember, he full grosse and fat,
As fed with lard, and that right well might seeme;
For, he had been a fatting hogs of late,
That yet his browes with sweat, did reek and steem,
And yet the season was full sharp and breem;
In planting eeke he took no small delight:
Whereon he rode, not easie was to deeme;
For it a dreadfull Centaure was in sight,
The seed of Saturne, and faire Nais, Chiron hight

torsdag 22. november 2012

For the past month this blog has been dormant as a consequence of my thesis work. I have now handed in the thesis to the Department and await the defence in medio December. I'm nonetheless trying to keep up four posts a month, and to achieve this I'm going the easy route: poetry posts. The first one is Geoffrey Hill's second sonnet from his cycle An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England, printed in Tenebrae, 1978.

onsdag 31. oktober 2012

As a Norwegian I did not grow up with Halloween as anything noteworthy. Occasionally, there was a service at my local church for All Hallows, and of course there was the infrequent exposure to the American way of celebrating Halloween. We did have a similar tradition when I grew up, but that was on New Year's Eve, and it was shielded from the commercialisation Halloween has succumbed to. Because of this, I'm not very big on the whole Halloween hullaballoo, and it is with sadness I watch the spectacle rising to American standards here in Norway.

However, since I'm too busy to write blogposts of any length, and since I try to keep this thing updated at least four times a month, I will here present a poem of my own making, whose subject is not inappropriate on this day.

tirsdag 23. oktober 2012

Last August I spent some days in York and most of the time I either spent in company with good friends or roaming about the city in search of history. One of my many favourite places in York is the Church of the Holy Trinity in Goodramgate and when I had tired of the tourist-thronged streets I sometimes retired to the churchyard to have some time alone. Unfortunately, due to the tourist season, I was never truly alone as people would walk in and out of the church while talking loudly, or sitting down to eat lunch. I have a hard time appreciating crowds - even when small - and I couldn't help becoming increasingly annoyed at their very touristy behaviour. Surely, some of this annoyance stemmed from my prejudice of tourists and my irritation may have been unwarranted to some extent. It did, however, result in this little poem, written mostly in situ, which I'd like to share. The italicised text in the opening line is an actual quote from one of the female tourists.

mandag 15. oktober 2012

In the previous blogpost I presented a brief overview of the cult of Edward the Confessor, the historical framework for my MA thesis. In this blogpost I will continue on the subject of Edward and present an introduction to the methodological issues I have faced in my work on the king's three images, i.e. how the king and has been depicted in three categories of literature: historiography, hagiography and liturgy. The purpose of my thesis is to examine how these three categories relate and influence each other. The liturgical excerpts are taken from MS Rawlinson liturg. g. 10 and have been translated by me, with invaluable assistance from my supervisor.

Edward the Confessor and Edward Martyr (MS Royal 2B VI, 13thC), courtesy of British Library

And so as
the king moved forward little by little, burdened by this noble
burden, the tendons that the longstanding illness had contracted were
suddenly extended, the passage of blood that his stiffened veins had
restricted resumed, his bones became firm, and his withered flesh
became warm again. His joints emerged out of his flesh, and his feet
were separated from his buttocks. The man stretched out his lower
legs from the knees, which were now flexible and flowing with healthy
blood. The royal clothing was adorned rather than defiled.

- The
Life of Saint Edward,
Aelred of Rievaulx (translated by Jane Patricia Freeland)

The
Representation of St. Edward

The heart of the issue is as follows: how was Edward the Confessor
represented in the various Medieval texts, and how do the various
categories relate?

To answer this we must first look at what texts we are dealing with.
I have divided the literature about Edward into three categories - or
genres - and I have made this division based on the conventions and
purposes that guide the respective types of texts. First of all we
have historiography and hagiography which both are historical
narratives with an expressed didactic purpose. I have chosen to treat
these two separately because while they both fall under the aegis of
history, the genre of hagiography has a very unique structure in that
it is centred around repetition and moulded after the Gospels'
presentation of Christ. A hagiography is a sacred biography focussed
on one particular person and his or her saintly and virtuous life,
death and miracles. For this reason the hagiographic texts of Edward
the Confessor are treated as a category of their own. The third type
of text is the liturgical, and this is a category set to music, aimed
at celebrating a saint in a particular setting - i.e. the Church
space - on days assigned to the saint in question. Liturgy is a form
of communication between the supplicating choir and the recipient
saint - unlike the two other genres it is not designed to be
intelligible for an audience beyond this. When examining the various
textual sources for St. Edward they must all be approached on their
own accord, keeping in mind the guiding conventions in order to
understand how they function within the cult.

Historiography

Historiographical works occupy the largest share of the Edward
literature. The most important work is Vita Ædwardi -
abbreviated Vita I - which was executed by an anonymous
Flemish monk at the behest of Edward's widow Edith. The text was
completed shortly after Edward's death and - although this is an
issue of some contention - had as its purpose to ensure Edith a
favourable position in the Norman regime. This text is very important
in that it established Edward's virtues and typology, and provided
later writers - both historiographers and hagiographers - with
material with which they developed Edward's character. Not every
characteristic was included in later texts, and some characteristics
were added later. The characteristics that did make it into the
standard repertoire and became canonical virtues, so to speak, were
Edward the Solomonic peacemaker, the chaste king, the man of visions
- likened to the prophet Jonah who foretold the fall of Niniveh - and
the pious monarch who preferred to discuss theology with monks rather
than to immerse himself in the world of the court - a sort of monkish
king with traditions all the way back to Merovingian times. These
virtues were also to some extent included in Norman historiographies
written shortly after the Conquest.

The next significant historiographical text, however, was William of
Malmesbury's Deeds of the English Kings written in the
mid-1120s. In this book William presents Edward as an almost dual
figure: on the one hand Edward was a very saintly king - although not
regarded by William as a saint - whose piety, charity, chastity,
temperance and humility ensured him a favourable standing in the eyes
of God. Edward's rule was pre-ordained by the Almighty, William
stated, and this could be seen in Edward's ability to heal the sick
and foretell the future. However, William was adamant that this was
due to Edward's personal piety, not his office as king. In his book
William of Malmesbury in fact uses Edward as a foil against the idea
that sanctity came inherently with kingship, a claim that was on the
rise in France. In this light it is also interesting to note that the
second representation of Edward is that of a man too simple of mind
to be a good king. In fact, claims William, had it not been for God's
personal intercession England would have fallen into destitution
during Edward's reign because of his inability to rule.

These two historiographical texts were very formative for the later
tradition. Hagiographies were based on these works, and in the case
of William of Malmesbury he was copied more or less verbatim into
later works of history - which was a common practice in the Middle
Ages. The perhaps most interesting aspect of the historiographical
tradition is that historians would include Edward's less saintly
characteristics - as found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and to some
extent in pre-canonisation histories - such as his confiscation of
his mother's possession and the king's participation in war. These
elements were included even after Edward had been established as a
saint.

Hagiography

The first proper hagiography written
for Edward the Confessor - i.e. the first that unequivocally follows
the conventions established for hagiographic texts - is Vita
Beati Regis Edwardi (or Vita
II for short) written c.1138 by
Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster Abbey. This text was a part of
a conscious effort to have Edward canonised, although - as we
have seen - that effort ultimately failed. In Vita
II
Osbert gleaned material from Vita
I,
William of Malmesbury and a handful of other sources and arranged
them in a hagiographic structure. This meant, chiefly, to remove the
political narrative of Vita
I,
include more miracles and pays more attention to Edward's virtues.
These virtues are the same that has already been established: Edward
was a Solomonic man of peace, a prophet, a chaste man, a temperate
and pious man pre-ordained to rule by God. Osbert's emphasis,
however, is Edward's visions and his healing - both while living and
posthumously - and this is of course natural since Osbert aimed to
propagate Edward's sainthood. There were, however, some novelties
aside from the new miracles and the new visions. Osbert wrote for a
well-educated Papacy heavily influenced by Cistercian devotion to the
Virgin Mary, and he therefore included Edward's invocation of the
Holy Virgin and compared Edward with antitypes from the Classical
lexicon: His charity was compared to the covetous Midas and his
mildness was contrasted with the tyranny of Dionysious of Siracuse.

When
Edward had been canonised in 1161 the Abbot of Westminster saw the
need for a new hagiography, ostensibly one that was better suited for
a royal audience than Vita II and
one through which they could hope to mould the king according to
their own tastes. The Abbot commissioned Aelred of Rievaulx and on
the translation of Edward's relics October 13 1163, Aelred presented
his Vita Sancti Edwardi
- henceforth Vita III
- to the king at Westminster and held a sermon based on the passage
from Luke where Christ says nobody hides their light under a bushel.
Vita III became the
official vita and it
engendered a wide array of adaptations in prose and verse,
Anglo-Norman and Middle-English. Aelred's was the last proper vita
written for Edward, and although there were later Latin adaptations
too, these were abbreviations. Since Aelred wrote for a royal
audience he made some changes accordingly: he left out the Classical
antitypes of Vita II
and compared Edward instead with a larger catalogue of Biblical
figures - some of them women. He also added a few more miracles, some
of which were meant to show that Edward could work wonders beyond the
walls of Westminster. When it comes to virtues Aelred presents
essentially the same list as Osbert, but he gives them more space:
while Osbert dedicates 9 pages to Edward's chastity, Aelred spends
more than 20; while Osbert refers to Edward's temperance a couple of
times within five pages, Aelred returns to it on at least four very
separate occasions. Additionally Aelred emphasises the Christlike
aspects of Edward to a greater degree. Another interesting difference
is that while Osbert explicitly says that all kings should take heed
from this story, Aelred specifically turns to Henry II - which was
probably part of the reason why a new vita was
needed.

Liturgy

Liturgy
is a tricky category in this regard since it stands out in certain
ways. One the one hand liturgy has an historical dimension in that
parts of the liturgical repertoire presents episodes from the saint's
life and miracles - especially the lessons at Matins, which were read
as opposed to the chants which were sung. The lessons at Matins were
also called historia
since it was from the saint's historia
they took much of their material - material that clearly belongs to
the established historical narrative. On the other hand these
episodes are interspersed with scriptural readings and chants
sometimes taken from a common repertoire, and several of the
liturgical items were sung, not read. We have, in other words, a
category far more complex than the simple narratives of
historiography and hagiography. Because of the difference in form,
liturgists had to present the material in a different, more
compressed way than the ordinary hagiographer. In other words, what
Osbert and Aelred could dedicate several chapters to, the liturgist
had to compress into one or two chants comprising only from about
four to fourteen lines, give or take. In addition the material was
sometimes rendered in verse, which added certain constraints to the
manner of expression, and we see this in an episode recounted in both
vitae regarding an
Irish cripple: where the hagiographers dedicate a chapter to the
matter, the liturgist expresses the case accordingly:

Who
exerts power over riches and mundane

delights, observe in awe the
grace and glory of

King Edward who [although] a mighty

and
noble king is [nonetheless] so humble

that
someone so miserably ugly and crippled

he supported [him and]
carrying [him]

made the one carried healthy again.This is from a
lesson, read at Matins, and treats the same episode as depicted in
the epigraph. The compression of meaning becomes even more acute in
the chants - which sometimes deal with biographical details - which
are much shorter. One such chant is the responsory, which was
performed after the lesson, and had a particular division: the main
division is between the choral respond and the verse. The respond is
in turn divided into responsum and repetenda, and the repetenda is
repeated after the verse. In this way, the heart of the message -
what needs to be emphasised - is placed in the repetenda, which thus
contains the key to the responsory. I will now show you some examples
taken from the material for Matins, which was the first service of
the day, held a few hours after sunset. The Matins was the longest of
the services and it is here we find the narrative material.

This can be seen
here:

[R]
The man was called back to his fatherland

from
exile by the intercession of Saint Peter

and to
rule the entire kingdom

[r].he
was elevated to his ancestral throne[v]
Although he was married

he
led a celibate life.

[r]
he was elevated to the ancestral throne.

As we see, the important part of the message is that Edward was elevated - or in this sense probably pre-ordained - to the English throne. The compression of material is further illustrated in another lesson from Matins:

The
merits of the holy king

are pleasing to God;

this simple
meaning [truth?]

a threefold vision demonstrates.

First: the
Seven Sleepers turned around.

Second:
The Danish king

who
was enclosed in the seas.

Third:
Miraculously appeared

Christ
[unto] Edward visibly

when
he participated in Mass.

Through his holy prayers

we shall be
saved in Heaven.

As we see from these examples the form of liturgy contains very different guidelines for the liturgist than the hagiographer, and although both categories deal with the same material, it is presented very differently. There is also another great difference to keep in mind: while hagiographies could be dedicated to either a courtly or a clerical audience, the liturgical image was not meant to be beheld by anyone but those who performed the liturgy and the one for whom it was performed: the saint. This means that when we behold the king's liturgical image we see him the way his devotees saw him. We see emphasised those virtues, characteristics and topics most important to those who through their prayers and liturgical performance upheld the cult and constituted the very heart of it. By unveiling the liturgical image we come almost face to face with the most central part of the cult.

Om meg

Norwegian medievalist, bibliophile, lover of art, music and food. This blog is a mixture of things personal and scholarly and it serves as a venue for me to share things I find interesting with likeminded people.